The use of mini-invasive techniques has become the standard for many routine surgical procedures. However, among mini-invasive surgical techniques, laparoscopy procedures have great drawbacks, which include difficulties in accessing the surgical target and the technical limitations of working with coaxial surgical instruments. These limitations are particularly clear when one operates through a single parietal access opening (single incision) and/or natural orifice in the patient. This surgical technique imposes constrains on the possibility of triangulating the instruments, applying offset forces, and on the dimensions of the instruments themselves. Moreover, collisions often occur among instruments both inside and outside the operating surgical area. However, the use of additional surgical openings, which would allow better operability of the instruments in the surgical area, is associated with an increased risk of bleeding, for example at the level of the abdominal wall in the case of abdominal surgery, and of accidental damage of the viscera, as well as consequent increases in postoperative pain and risks of infection and formation of incisional hernias.
Conventional robotic systems for laparoscopic surgery are particularly bulky, complicated to assemble and difficult to insert and remove from the surgical area. Moreover, these robotic systems have highly limited functionalities when used in the configuration with single parietal access, and it is moreover impossible to use them through natural orifices.